What is IP Communications and How Does it Improve Small Business Operations?

A small business’ best weapon is its agility and mobility.  When a small business is both agile and mobile, especially when it’s a service-driven business, a high customer-satisfaction rating is almost always guaranteed.  IP communications through unified communications systems helps improve business agility and allows for better mobility for its workforce.

In a Nutshell

As most commonly defined, IP communications is method or protocol that runs on the utilisation of the internet in the exchange of data from one computer to another.  Through this protocol, businesses have the ability to enhance and improve their existing telephony network.  What this results in is an overall improvement in day to day core operations.

Protocol with Benefits

The use of IP communications is without a doubt, laden with advantages or benefits over normal telephony methods.  These advantages are what help owners of small to mid-sized businesses to catapult their organisations into the head of the line. 

Some of the more immediate benefits of utilising IP communications in lieu of or in conjunction with normal telephony protocols are:

·         General decrease in overhead/daily expenditures – The most obvious savings will be from long distance savings.  This is especially true for service-driven organisations that outsource a major portion of their workforce.  With normal telephony, this business action would be downright impractical and would certainly negatively affect its existence.  Furthermore, this would allow any organisation to effectively reach additional sources of revenue in the form of customers.

·         Workforce mobility – IP communications facilitate easier and faster mobility for a business’ workforce.  One good example is when an employee needs to move to a different part of the premises there is no need to change anything in the cabling path.  IP Communications, specifically IP telephony allows a person to move his or her phone from one place to another without any changes down to its existing telephone number as well.  This is also beneficial for companies that have a number of employees working from home.  They can work as efficiently and as productively as their colleagues that are working at the office.

·         Unified messaging – with an IP communications plan in place, email, voicemail, text messages and other forms of communication can be seamlessly accessed through a wide range of devices.  This ensures that no messages that are relevant to an organisation’s daily operational activity will be missed.